A little faith and a lot of heart
by Frankincense Pontipee
Summary: A relationship in five hospitals, where they wait and wait and try to fix each other.


**A little faith and a lot of heart**

1.

_...we are getting reports that multiple gunshots were fired at President Bartlet as he was leaving a public event in Rosslyn, Virginia. The shots were fired approximately seven minutes ago from a nearby office building..._

For the first time in her life, she breaks the speed limit. She knows there's nothing she can do, knows there's nothing she can really achieve by taking on all this traffic, but the idea of sitting frozen in front of the TV while some of the people she cares most about in the world deal with this maelstrom without her is simply unthinkable. She wants to be useful. It's all she's ever wanted. She drives until she knows the hospital is nearby, finds the first parking space and then runs, bursting breathless into a lobby crowded with agents and nurses and doctors and press and photographers, none of whom appear to know what is going on or who she is.

"I'm sorry, they told me to come back here? I'm sorry. Is there word on the President?" The relief at finally getting through the lobby almost overshadows the reason why they're all there, but the look on CJ's face pulls her right back, and for a split second, she thinks it must be bad news.

"The President's going to be fine."

Relief hits her in the back of the knees. "Oh thank God. Oh thank God, that's the best news I've ever heard. I got here as fast as I could, I hard time getting in, I had to find an agent who knew me and I was shaking, but it's just, I didn't know anything..."

"Donna." Toby interrupts her, almost nervously, and the next second, she understands why. "Josh was hit."

"Hit with what?"

_Glass, Donna, he was hit by a piece of broken glass_. She knows that if that were the answer, her friends wouldn't be looking at her like they are right now, but despite that, it still takes her breath away when Toby answers her. "He was shot in the chest."

"He's in surgery right now." CJ looks up at her, obviously concerned but somehow...numb. They all are.

"I don't understand. I don't understand, is it...serious?"

And Toby tells her. That it's critical. That the bullet collapsed his lung and damaged a major artery. A doctor starts talking to them, something about the hospital not being able to make them comfortable for the time the operation will take, and she hopes they won't try to make her leave, because apart from the fact that she's not sure she can walk, she knows she doesn't want to.

Somewhere in an operating theatre, people are working on him, and if they fail, he will die. And suddenly, nothing makes sense.

* * *

><p>2.<p>

It's quiet in the waiting room. A couple of kids a few chairs over are eating pizza while they wait for their friend, and this takes the edge off the smell of disinfectant and aggressive cleanliness but it reminds him that he's not eaten in hours and his stomach growls loud enough that she pauses in the middle of filling out his details on a clipboard and turns to look at him.

"You want me to go get you some dinner?"

"No thanks."

"A sandwich, then? Coffee?"

"No."

"You sure? That Thai place CJ likes is just round the corner."

"Donna. I'm fine."

She gives him a look, and the goes back to her clipboard, glancing for the most fleeting of moments at his hand as she does so. "Right."

He sighs, instinctively flexing his fingers and wincing at the sharp thrill of pain that runs up his arm. "I mean, I don't need dinner."

Though still filling in details about him that he's not even sure _he_ remembers, his wince is not lost on her, and she looks up at him and then down at his hand again. "Stop doing that. You've probably still got glass in it."

His one vivid memory of that evening is of removing a piece of glass from the palm of his hand, and he'd like to tell her that after staggering to the bathroom to throw up, he continued to check until he was sure that no more glass remained, except that would be a lie, and he's too tired for that. He may have removed all the glass, but if that was likely, if Leo and Donna thought that was likely, he knows that he wouldn't be here, sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a room that smells of waiting and worry and nausea.

He catches her eye and he could swear she just _knows_ what he's thinking, and she repeats what she said to him earlier that evening, as they left the office. "Are you a doctor, Josh?"

"No."

She clicks her pen officiously. "Then be quiet. I'm just finishing up here."

Forty five minutes later, minus two tiny pieces of glass and with three stitches, a professional bandage job and a bottle of painkillers, they button their coats and leave the relative warmth of the waiting room to find that it has started to snow. Crunching past the ambulance bay, a sudden siren makes them both jump, and he tenses, feeling panic rising at the back of his throat.

"Josh..."

"I'm fine." His reply is instinctive, but he glances down at her as he says it, and sees her face, concerned but calm, and he feels her hand tighten on his arm.

"Josh..."

"I'm OK." And suddenly, he means it.

* * *

><p>3.<p>

There's no adequate way of describing this feeling. Some sports metaphor might cover it, but as someone who has assiduously avoided organised sports his entire life, he's left standing in an open door staring at the detritus of a medical emergency, holding a bunch of flowers and trying to remember if he's ever felt like this. Seconds later, he is sprinting down corridors in search of someone who might know where she's gone, and then he's standing, powerless, on the other side of a window watching surgeons try to save her life.

The worst part is the waiting, and it feels like he's been doing it for days. Waiting in airports, waiting on planes, waiting in hospitals. He read her emails on the plane - the reports he asked her to send him that he never quite got around to reading. She was good at this, he realised. She had uncovered more truth in her meetings with normal people than any of those high level diplomats with a place at the table. She was good at it, and she was enjoying it. She had met someone. That hadn't been in her emails, of course, though he realised when he discovered that Colin had been her tour guide for most of her unofficial trips in Gaza, that she had mentioned him. Several times, in fact. He just hadn't noticed.

Colin is a nice guy, and had they met under different circumstances, they might have been friends, but right now, as they're slumped in chairs waiting for news, it's all he can do not to kick him in the teeth. Colin's clearly trying to figure out why a boss with nothing but professional, or, at best, platonic feelings for his employee would fly half way round the world and then spend days waiting in a German military hospital for news, and honestly, he can't blame him. He's been wondering this himself, actually. Why did he buy that bunch of flowers, for instance? Why, standing in the operating theatre when she'd asked to see him before her operation, had he nearly kissed her instead of doing what he went in to do, which was to tell her she was going to be OK? Why, suddenly, was the idea of her choosing Colin over him making him want to break things? Colin's telling him a story, a moral tale of a girl he took for granted, and he's sure there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but just as he feels like the life lesson might be spelt out for him, they're interrupted by the surgeon.

More waiting. This time, with the threat of brain damage hanging over them. He makes small talk with her Mother, who has just flown in, updates Leo, tries to catch up on emails. All the while, she's just lying there, pale and small and broken and there's nothing he can do to fix her. If waiting helped, she'd be well on the way to recovery, and he's just thinking this when he hears her say his name, and it's the most beautiful thing he's ever heard. It's hardly even a whisper, but it's there, and she knows him, and she's going to be OK, he just knows it.

"You're still here." It's almost a question.

"Yeah." He watches her face and hopes that she knows how much he wants to know the answer. "I'm still here."

* * *

><p>4.<p>

She takes Annabeth a coffee, calls CJ, checks in with Bram. Everyone's in shock, no one can quite believe this has happened, but in their bewilderment and grief, no one has reacted to the news as if it were somehow their fault. No one, that is, except him.

It had taken her a while to find him after Annabeth called from the hospital. When she finally did, he'd been laughing, joking about the guys she'd left him with in the ballroom, clearly about to suggest they 'go for another walk or something', and she had searched for the best words, the gentlest way of breaking this news, but maybe in this situation, 'best' is a relative term, because as long as she lives, she will never forget the look on his face. It's a look she has seen twice before: once on the night of the Illinois primary, and, though this is a blurrier memory, once from her bed in some German military hospital. _I did this_, it says_. I don't know how, but I did this_.

"Donna." She turns to see Mallory walking toward her.

"Mallory, hi. Are you...I mean, is there anything I can..."

Mallory shakes her head. "No, I'm fine, thanks. I mean, I've been better, but..." she trails off and then sighs. "I need to call my Mom. Is there a pay phone on this floor, do you know?"

"I just came from there, there are a bank of them by the elevator one floor down. "

A pause. Then, "You called CJ?"

"Yes."

"And she'll tell the President."

"Yes."

Mallory nods. "I should call them later."

"I'm sure they won't be expecting you..."

"I know." She smiles, and points at the elevator. "One floor down?"

"That's right."

"Were you looking for Josh?"

She shrugs, looking at the seat he was sitting in fifteen minutes ago. "I was about to start."

"Round the corner. By the window." Mallory pauses with her foot against the elevator door. "You guys are doing well, by the way, I meant to tell you earlier. Dad...Dad would be pleased."

She finds him exactly where Mallory said he'd be, standing alone by the window, and he has never looked so small. He is still in shock, but his eyes begin to clear a little as she fills him in on their recent wins and losses, and for the first time, she is thankful that it is election day. Waiting for the elevator to take them down to the car, she wants to tell him that it's not his fault, that Joanie's death was a tragic accident, that he couldn't have prevented his Father's pulmonary embolism any more than he could have stopped Leo's heart attack, that she survived Gaza, and that she loves him. She wants to tell him this and she wants him to believe her, but for now, she waits until the elevator doors are closed and slides her hand into his.

* * *

><p>5.<p>

"Where is she? Donna Lyman? Where _is she_?" He crashes into the reception desk, out of breath, and accosts the nurse on duty.

"And you are?"

"Her husband,_ her husband_, where is she?"

She checks her board. "Fifth floor, room twenty seven, but sir, wait..."

"What?" Already halfway to the elevators, he spins round. "_What_?"

She smiles sympathetically. "I was just going to warn you that those elevators are both being serviced for the next fifteen minutes." She shrugs. "I'm sorry."

Finding another, working elevator would probably be the best course of action given that he has done more running in the last forty minutes than he has in the last four years, but he knows that his trouble breathing has less to do with stairs and more to do with the message about an old friend from home handed to him in the Sit Room by the officer on duty. He's never thought of himself as particularly unfit, but it turns out that 'taking the stairs' and 'sprinting up the stairs' are two completely different things, and it occurs to him as he pauses to catch his breath in the third floor stairwell that the only other time he can remember running this fast was after he had stood, horrified, watching news footage of overturned, burning Jeeps in Gaza.

He ran for her then, and he runs for her now, bursting onto the fifth floor, and almost cannoning into a couple of doctors. "Room twenty seven," he gasps, "where's room twenty seven?"

One of them smiles and points, and he takes off in that direction, counting down room numbers as he runs: thirty one...thirty...twenty nine...twenty eight...

"Josh."

He stops short, hands braced either side of the door, and for a moment, all he can see is an empty hospital room, a floor littered with tubes and bloody swabs, but then she says his name again and he blinks and suddenly she's all he can see, sitting cross-legged on her bed in a hospital gown, her hair pulled back.

"You've been running."

"The elevators were being serviced." He drops his bag on the floor and kneels on the bed next to her and kisses her. "You OK?"

"Fine." She places a hand against his cheek and nods. "Lisa said you were in the Sit Room."

"Yeah."

"Anything serious?"

He shakes his head, collapsing into the chair next to her bed with a sigh. "Intelligence briefing. Nothing new."

She smiles, and leaning forward, pushes his damp hair off his forehead. "The elevators were being serviced, huh?"

"Yeah."

"And you took the stairs." Her incredulous mocking is gone the next moment as a contraction hits. "Ahh...Josh..."

In a second, he's out of his chair and holding her hand. "I'm here. I'm here."

"Josh, good, you're here." Doctor Adams pauses in the door, checking her notes, then comes to stand at the foot of the bed. "How're you doing, Donna?"

As the contraction passes, she leans back against the pillows, eyes shut. "I'd like to not be pregnant any more."

"Well, I'll see what I can do about that." Doctor Adams laughs, and begins her examination.

"Is everything OK?" He doesn't want to sound like some kind of compulsive worrier, but it's a question he's been asking himself since sprinting from the Sit Room and the sight of her in so much pain is almost more than he can take.

"They're both doing great, Josh." Doctor Adams looks up at him with a smile, "Not long now."

Somehow, he'd imagined that this was going to take hours. "Really?"

"Yep, apparently this kid is both driven and determined. Can't think where they'd get that from."

...

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

It's two hours later and the room is very still and very full of afternoon sunshine.

She yawns. "I'm not tired."

He looks down at their daughter, asleep in his arms, and then back up at her. "You should be."

"Are you a doctor, Josh?"

"No."

"Then be quiet. And come here." She holds out a hand to him, suddenly impatient, and he climbs onto the bed next to her and stretches out, Donna against one shoulder and their daughter in the crook of his other arm.

There's quiet again for a moment, and he's wondering if she's gone to sleep and is about to check when she disentangles an arm from round his waist and runs a finger across Claudie's little cheek.

"We did this, Josh," she murmurs sleepily, and he tightens his arm round her and kisses her hair and hopes she knows that of all the jobs he's had and all the jobs he will have, none will ever be more important than this one.

"We did this."

* * *

><p><em>Back and forth we ply these oars<em>

_They move in time and get entwined_

_Green with joy then gray with sorrow_

_Ripened fruit that falls tomorrow_

_Filling us with brilliance_

_Branches are bare with a pulse underneath_

_Flowering slowly inside_

_Your hands are warm and my body is wide_

_To hold all the promise of blue-velvet dark and stars_

_All it takes is a little faith and a lot of heart_

_Sweetheart_

* * *

><p>The title and the lyrics above are from <em>Stars<em> by The Weepies. They make me happy.


End file.
